Politics Archive

If you find a recorded public appearance by Ed Snowden not listed here, please e-mail the link to me at joshuazader at GMail. Please also notify me if any links below have expired.
Below is a list of all publicly available appearances by Ed Snowden since the original disclosure of his identity as the whistleblower behind Glenn Greenwald's reporting, in early July 2013. For additional information about Snowden, his motivations, and the story behind his decision to become a whistleblower, I highly recommend Greenwald's new book No Place to Hide.
2013-07-09 - The Guardian: Interview Part I and Part II (12 and ...

Here are my thoughts on the forced resignation of new Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich. I ultimately believe the differences of opinion on this topic come down to the question of civility.
The uncivil perspective: Use ostracism when someone is wrong about something important, and we think we can get away with it.
Problem is, people commonly disagree about what is wrong and what is important. If we use it on them today, they have more justification for using it on us tomorrow.
It creates an inquisition-like atmosphere of fear and conformity on all sides of all issues, because the stakes are higher, there ...

This year PayPal founder and visionary entrepreneur Peter Thiel offered a new class at Stanford called "Computer Science 183: Startup." It was intended to provide entrepreneurs with a high-level strategic overview of the challenges they face and must overcome, to succeed not only in business but in advancing human progress — in an era when real progress has, in fact, been slowing down for decades.
Stanford law student Blake Masters attended the course and offered detailed essay-style notes from all 18 courses. They're well worth reading. Check out the first one, "The Challenge of the Future," for a taste of Thiel's ...

This moving message just landed in my inbox, from friend Ross Barlow.
Honoring “The Chosin Few” in the Korean War from 27 November 1950 on into December 1950. The battle of Chosin Reservoir. It was intensely brutal combat in temperatures sometimes down to minus-35 degrees in the mountains. A frozen Hell.
Honored warriors there were from the US Marines, the US Army, the Republic of Korea (the “ROKs,” South Korea), and the British Royal Marine Commandos. But don’t forget, the ill-equipped (and tyrannically led) communist Red Chinese troops fought bravely against these UN forces, sometimes fighting down ...

This Thursday, September 24th, The John Stossel Show on Fox Business Network will air a show with the theme "What if Libertarians Were in Charge?"
The last seven minutes of the show will include a segment featuring Michael Strong and Magatte Wade, discussing how Free Cities will reduce poverty and create jobs, hope, and prosperity in the developing world.
The work to develop such cities is being spearheaded by the Free Cities Institute, but on the program Stossel actually refers to it as the "Free Cities Project." So I'm creating this blog post to help point interested parties -- as well ...

See the article "How to make a nuclear reactor that can't have a meltdown" for fascinating information about how nuclear power generators can be built -- and have been built -- that have zero chance of a meltdown, even in the worst case scenario.
This part is particularly relevant to our conversations today about the dangers of nuclear power:
To put it in perspective, in 2008 Next Big Future calculated how many people are killed per terawatt-hour of electricity generated. On average, there are 161 fatalities related to energy generation from coal for each one of those terawatt-hours, which comprise a quarter ...

I just submitted the following question on Peikoff.com.
It's a question I've had for many years, and the answers I've gotten from various Objectivist thinkers have varied considerably. It seems like a pretty important question, particularly for a philosophy that aspires to be internally consistent:
Ayn Rand taught that we have no unchosen obligations. She also taught that we must respect the rights of others. How does one resolve the apparent contradiction? Is it because rights constitute only a negative obligation? Or because we choose to live in society? Or something else?
I hope Dr. Peikoff answers it. I would be interested ...

Another outstanding offering from Bill Whittle.
I notice he's no longer working under the "Fireball" title, which I think is a good call. There was something gimmicky about that, and distracting about the associated visuals.
Thanks to Marsh for the link.

I just discovered these this morning. (Thanks, Marsh!) I haven't had time to watch them all, but I'm so blown away by the quality of the first one -- and I've found Bill Whittle to be so outstanding overall, in the past -- that I'm going to go ahead and post the full series here.
What do you think of his presentations?